


Shell Casing and Time Keeping

by these_dreams_go_on



Category: The 100 (TV), The 100 Series - Kass Morgan
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-06 00:06:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12199983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/these_dreams_go_on/pseuds/these_dreams_go_on
Summary: Bellamy and Clarke exchange gifts and Abby makes presumptions about their relationship





	Shell Casing and Time Keeping

 

Commander of the Coalition.

King of Azgeda.

But apparently peace and quiet were beyond his rule.

_  
“Dawn was an hour ago, Bellamy!”_

  
Wanheda’s voice carries easily down the hall, disrupting his sleep and he rolls over, burying his face in the pillow and willing his body to relax.

Except Wanheda isn’t the only one who can shout.

 _“Dawn is when it’s light enough to read by.”_ Her lover replies and Roan groans as he feels himself waking up.

_“No, that’s golden hour, how do you not know this?”_

  
How was Echo letting this happen?

His second had been known to refuse Octavia entry to the tower because ‘she had too much fire in her eyes’ but somehow, she was letting these two argue without interruption?

  
_“Clarke, you’re the one that insisted I get here at dawn, I had to drive through the night, so maybe cut me some slack…”_

  
They’d wake up all of Polis at this rate.

Pushing himself up, Roan willed himself to stand and stalked over to his chamber doors, pulling them open and looking around until he spotted the source of the chaos.

They were at the other end of the hall and standing so close he was surprised they weren’t deafening each other. Startled, they turned to him and he glared as murderously as possible with sleep still in his eyes.

“Would you two like to continue this conversation in the dungeon?” he growled and the they shook their heads in unison.

“Good,” he snapped, “Shut up.”

* * *

 

Nyko hates bullets.

Not for the reason that warriors hated them, but because his fingers were not deft enough to dig them from flesh without hurting the wounded.

He was a healer, but bullet wounds? He caused pain before he saved lives.

So, when Bellamy is carried into Ton DC, bleeding from a bullet to the chest, his heart sinks.

“Here,” Tinton, a young boy who had gone hunting with the Skai-kru man, holds out a piece of metal, “This came from the gun that shot him.” 

Nyko pockets it as Bellamy is laid out on the table, and tears the man’s shirt from his body.

At first glance, the wound looks as if it should be fatal, but more careful inspection brings relief to the healer, “It missed your heart and there is not too much blood,” he informs the Sky man as he blanches from the pain.

“It’s still in there.” Bellamy grunted, “Can you get it out?”

Time was, Nyko would not have known how to treat a bullet wound.

When the Mountain Men had shot at his people, more often than not, they had died either from the bullet or from the infection afterwards. Now, he knew how to extract the bullet carefully, without causing any damage as he did so, and when Clarke’s mother, Abigail arrived an hour later with Bellamy’s anxious father, she assured Nyko that he had done as good a job as she would have.

Tinton, who sat vigil outside the healing hut, explained that a freikdrein had somehow got hold of a gun and tried to rob them, Bellamy had pushed Tinton out of the way and taken the bullet that had been meant for the young Trikru hunter.

When he was well enough to be moved back to Arkadia, Tinton shuffles forward and hands him a chain, on which hung the bullet and shell casing.

“For saving my life.”

Drowsy from a combination of morphine and healing tea, Bellamy still manages to grin,

“Anytime.”

* * *

 

“He _has_ to be doing this deliberately!”

  
Roan raised an eyebrow but otherwise didn’t look away from the small fire crackling merrily in front of him.

The sun was sinking into the horizon, casting the world around them in deep reds and oranges, the camp had been set up for the night and there was nothing left to do but wait for Bellamy Blake to arrive with the rover.

  
“He will come.” Luna told Clarke, raising her head to meet her and accidentally dislodging her girlfriend who was wrapped in her arms,

“He was supposed to be here at sunset!” Clarke pointed out and Roan wondered why it was Skai-kru always had to use such vague times to meet.

“Chill, Clarke,” Raven grumbled as she re-positioned herself in Luna’s arms,

“He radioed two hours ago before he hit the dead zone and was fine.”

  
Clarke continues to pace and Roan loses himself in the heat and beauty of the flames, deliberately blocking out the rest of the world, so when Bellamy arrives just as the sun finishes it descent, he can’t hear them arguing about when exactly sunset is.

* * *

 

 

Clarke took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, trying to get a grip on her emotions.

It didn’t work.

But this had to be done.

Today.

So, she sets off across the field, towards the river where Bellamy and Raven were somehow managing to have an argument about running water, because their ride-and-die friendship relationship meant occasional bickering over any non-urgent issue, and stands about a hundred metres away on the bank.

She waits for him to join her, staring down at the riverbed, so beautifully visible under the pure, clean water. “Here,” she mumbles, “I want you to have this.”

He looks down at the thing in her hand, not immediately recognizing it and she takes the opportunity, grabbing his left arm, removing it from his hip and holding it up. He doesn’t even react as she pushes up his jacket sleeve to expose his wrist, only frowning when he realizes that she’s attaching something to him.

It’s not until she’s done that he sees the wrist watch and figures out what she’s gifting him.

  
“Clarke…”

  
She shakes her head slightly, silencing any protests he had begun to utter,  
  


“I _can’t_ …” she swallows, “I can’t wear it anymore because…because of what happened with Finn, but it works and it can be useful.”

  
And perhaps if someone else had it on, she could recall the memories of her dad checking the time without hearing the gunfire from the grounder village.

  
“It’ll also help you get places on time.” she mutters and his glare of affectionate exasperation lets her know that the moment has safely passed. 

* * *

 

Bellamy Blake didn’t necessarily go looking for fights.

That being said, he sure seemed to end up in a lot of them.

And since he had started wearing that chain around his neck, a lot of his injuries were opportunistic attempts at garrotting him.

The latest one had him in the infirmary with Jackson pressing a cold compress to his throat to try and get the swelling down while reminding him to stop trying to talk.

Except that he needed to get Miller to find Murphy and Emori because they needed to know why the scavengers kept passing through their land.

“Make him shut up.” Jackson orders someone behind him and Bellamy glares pointedly at him before he hears the amused snort, “I’ve been trying for the last year.” Clarke quips,

He looks over his shoulder to glare at her and she winces at the sight of his throat,

“Are you okay?” she asks, touching it with gentle fingers that somehow feel electrifying and soothing at the same time.

He tries to nod, winces at the pain it sends through his swollen neck and holds out his hand.

Clarke tries to lace their fingers together before feeling the scratch of the metal in his palm, she lets it drop into her own before withdrawing her hand and seeing the chain where the shell-casing and bullet hung.

“Look after it for me?” he croaks and she smirks, sipping it over her head and tucking it into her shirt.  

* * *

 

Checking the time could become an addiction.

Bellamy wasn’t sure if his productivity had increased or whether he was simply now aware of the hours, but he felt like he was getting more done.

He does his best to only look at the watch when nobody is watching him, keeping it covered by his jacket otherwise.

He knows that if any one of the hundred saw him wearing Clarke’s dad’s watch, the current rumours that they were sleeping together would kick into overdrive and become a secret marriage. There’d be questions and assumptions, he wouldn’t be able to get a single order out without people demanding he give them the exact definition of his relationship with her.

And if he’s told people once- _Octavia_ \- he’s told them a thousand times- _Jasper_ \- that it’s none of their damn business but people like distractions and gossiping about the two of them keeps Arkadia entertained for days.  

So, when Dr. Abby Griffin requests him to drive her to Ton DC for a meeting with Nyko, he doesn’t think anything of it, until she reaches over, across the steering wheel to push down his sleeve,

  
“I thought so.” she declares smugly and he looks at her askance,

“Ma’am?” he prompts, because she’s holding him in place against the wheel when they’re driving sixty miles an hour down a road that’s about to make a sharp right.

  
She releases him, clearly unaware how close she was to running them into a tree and he corrects quickly, catching a branch against the side of the car but no lasting damage.

When he can safely focus- and breathe again- he turns his attention to Abby who is wearing a knowing smile on her face,

  
“Clarke plays with the necklace you gave her,” she reveals and he forces himself not to reverse the car and run them back so he can take another go at the tree.

“When you aren’t around and she’s nervous or thinking, she plays with the shell casing,” She continues on, oblivious to her near-death experience, “It comforts her.”

  
Well, he’d taken to resting his right hand over the watch when he thought of Clarke, as if by shielding it he could shield her.

But he’s not about to admit that.

  
“I’m glad.” He manages to croak, while doing his best to subtly increase their speed.

  
As long as they got to Ton DC alive, Nyko could probably put them back together again.

  
“You know, I think Jake would have liked you,” she muses, “Your propensity for saving our daughter’s life aside, you are a good man, Bellamy Blake, loyal and hard working.”

  
The Factory rat in him wants to argue that the closest an Alpha station asshole ever got to hard work was getting through their expensive liquor hangovers, but he never knew Jake Griffin and by all accounts, he had done his best by the people of the Ark.

So, he settles for a murmured thank-you and a vague sentiment about having liked him as well while Abby pats his right arm in what he thinks is probably a blessing and they fall back into companionable silence until they reach the outskirts of the village.

When she’s busy crouched over a camp fire with Nyko, the two of them excitedly planning a hospital on the edge of their territories, he checks the time, knowing that Abby was supposed to be back by six pm.

And this time, if he was late even with the watch, Clarke would probably just give up and kill him.


End file.
